Ben Garbacz/Daily Mining Gazette Voters in the City of Houghton approved four changes to the city charter Tuesday

Copper Country — Citizens of the City of Houghton voted in favor of amending the city charter Tuesday through four ballot proposals.

Proposal No. 1 amended gender specific terminology to be replaced with gender neutral terms, and was passed by a vote of 581 to 212. Houghton City Clerk Amy Zawada explained the charter will no longer refer to council members, city manager and clerk as “him,” but rather a gender neutral term or “he or she.”

“It was just kind of an archaic way to refer to the city manager and everything as ‘he,'” she said. “So it was just making everything more fair and gender neutral across the board.”

Proposal No. 2 prohibits private gain by public officials and employees, specify events which create potential conflicts of interest and prohibits city officials or employees from participating in, voting or acting upon any potential conflict of interest. The city council must also create a conflict of interest ordinance. This proposal was passed by a vote of 744 to 50. Zawada said this amendment was something the city’s citizens wanted to be added since the charter commission 10 years ago.

Proposal No. 3, Charter Section 2.6 Filling Vacancies, passed with a vote of 680 to 100. “It was just changing from 30 days to 60 days to be able to fill a council member seat that was vacated,” Zawada said.

Proposal No. 4, Charter Section 3.2 Biennial and Special Elections, will be amended to remove the requirement for concurrence by the county elections scheduling committee for special elections. The requirement that a special election be called at least 45 days in advance of the election will instead allow for special elections to be held when called by resolution of the city council in accordance with the state authorized election dates. This proposal passed with a vote of 585 to 177.

In Copper City, residents voted to approve a renewal of the fire protection millage by a vote of 23 to 2. The renewal is a levy of up to 0.5 mills from Fiscal Year 2025 to 2029. The